Monkeying Around in Azrou

Salaam wa aleikum!

So this Saturday, Siera, Joanne, Stephanie, and I all decided on a day trip to Azrou for basically one reason: monkeys. That’s right. Monkeys.

You see, in the forest located close to Azrou, there is a community of barbary apes that live close to the side of the road. Tourists (mostly Arab ones) come to interact with them and feed them and basically bask in the knowledge that they are partying with actual monkeys.

So anyway, our day started out with a jaunt over to the grand taxi station that is located close to where Siera lives (Joanne and Stephanie came to my house first to drop their stuff off for our sleepover). When ended up discovering that the grand taxi station is actually also a bus station, so we tried to go in and see when the next bus to Azrou was when who should we find but five people from the Egypt program that were also going to Azrou. We tried to get on their bus, but the man who sold tickets said that they were sold out and that we would have to wait until the 11:30 bus. Despondent, we walked over to see if our first plan (taking a grand taxi) would work out. And it would! If we were willing to pay 200 dirham one way. And we weren’t.

So long, suckers.

We decided that we would just wait for the next bus and started walking back to the bus station. We were about to walk back in when this guy runs up to us and starts yelling pretty loudly, ‘Azrou?! You want to go to Azrou?!’ And we were like, yes, of course we want to go to Azrou. It turns out that they did have enough room on the bus and we did a real quick money-ticket exhange and ran to hop on the bus as it was pulling out of the station. It was a pretty intense start to the day.

WE MADE IT!

So the bus ride was about an hour and when we got off, we kind of ended up just staying close to the Egypt group because they were going to same place we were anyway. Robert (one of the directors of the Egypt program) did some hardcore haggling with the grand taxi drivers and we got driven up to the Monkey Forest for 200 dirham (9 people, 2 taxis, could have been worse).

Negotiations. 

Four girls in a taxi, going up a mountain.

So we get up to the forest and see monkeys. Lots of monkeys.

After spending some time with the monkeys, we then all went hiking in the forest for a little over an hour and saw some pretty cool things. Enjoy looking at pictures (because nothing else happened).

So after that, we spent some more time with the monkeys and waited for our grand taxis to pick us up. Please, enjoy more pictures.

When then went back to the bus station in Azrou and bought our tickets for the 4:30 return ride to Meknes and waited for an hour to finally get on the bus. Siera and I were kind of worried because Mass started at 6:30 and we didn’t want to miss it, especially considering the fact that we had been invited to dinner with the priest afterwards, but we ended up getting there just in time.

We had a great time at Mass, but we noticed all these new non-old-French people there. It turns out that they were Italians who were visiting Meknes and Father Pietro, so they ended up staying for dinner as well. They were super nice and spoke a little English, but I was mainly excited because it meant that I could use Italian. At first, it was a bit of a problem because I kept mixing Arabic and English and Italian all at the same time, but it gave me a big boost on my language speaking confidence because, as it turns out, I do still remember Italian! (Seriously, you have no idea how excited this made me.)

After dinner, we all chilled at a little café for a while and then Stephanie, Joanne, and I went back to my house for our sleepover. All in all, it was an awesome day.

Interesting Story of the Day:

So I was falling behind the group because I really wanted to take a picture of the mama monkey with her baby, and this Moroccan guy that had one of the horses comes up to me and strikes up a conversation. We’re talking and he’s asking about my studies and ‘How long do you have left?’ and ‘Maybe you can come back to Morocco’ and ‘I’ve always wanted to go to America.’ So I’m like, yeah, cool story bro, but I really need to meet back up with my group. He tells me that I can have a free ride on the horse, ‘Really, it’s a gift!’ and so I get on the horse and he takes me back over to my group. But once again, I start falling behind (because everyone else was walking crazy fast) and I end up at the back of the group, behind this horse guy. He turns around, sees me, and then tells me that I should get on the horse again and go for another ride. I say, ‘Thanks, but no thanks, I really need to get back to my group’ and he says, ‘No, it’s fine, we can go see the panoramic view, together!’

…So I’m pretty sure a marriage proposal was not far off in my future. (I didn’t go with him.)

Ma’a salaama!